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Notes From The Moment- Part 2
I rarely write in Pride in Madness when I’m in the midst of a rage. When my body is vibrating and my mind bent on destroying myself it is impossible to sit at the computer and type what I’m feeling. There are rarely words, just screams and thrown objects. One night though, maybe back in March, I grabbed my note pad and wrote the thoughts that were flying through my mind. I would like to share the second of 4 notes with you.
“I want to do this alone. I want my physical to match my emotional, so I can stop lying to myself but these lies have to be based on something. Don’t they? I don’t want help. I don’t want someone there to stop me when I fall apart.”
I feel like certain things are happening in my life that are damaging me. I’m told that they’re not happening. Even in my “wise mind” I know that some of them are and I want people to stop telling me otherwise or I need to stop lying to myself. it’s extremely frustrating. I really wish that I was alone, or at least living alone, so I could fall apart and do what I want to do. People keep me together and sometimes that’s just not what I want. I want to fall apart free of shame. i won’t get mad at myself if I do that but I know others will.
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After Ever After
“In case you were wondering what happens after your Disney princesses live happily ever after, Jon Cozart, aka “Paint” has all the answers. And it’s not pretty…” – The Huffington Post
Time to abandon evidence based medicine?
“Evidence based” medicine tells us to ignore what we see and feel. It discounts our personal experience and labels it as “anecdotal” evidence. We know our experiences and they are the most valuable asset to Big Pharma. They need to start caring!
Diary Entry #1: Poem
This is a poem I wrote when I was 15. I don’t do poetry but it was worth a shot. This was written before I was diagnosed. I had no words to describe what I was feeling but I knew something was wrong. In this poem I actually, unknowingly, mention some of the symptoms of depression.
Monday August 23, 2004
I’m hiding something,
A deep dark secret
About a feeling I keep locked up.
No one knows its there,
They all think it’s gone.
But let me ask you this,
Have you ever felt low?
So low-you’re tired,
So low-you’re body hurts,
so low-you can’t even cry,
So low-you just can’t feel anymore.
I have.
But I keep it a secret,
Pretend to be happy,
Pretend to love myself,
Love life.
There’s too many lies in my life.
I can’t pick up the pieces,
I’ve lost too many of them
New Linkin Park
New Linkin Park album came out yesterday, Living Things (2012). I personally feel that after Meteora (2004) LP kinda went down. Their sound became a lot softer and while the lyrics stayed amazing I miss the anger in their music. I respect artist growth and development so I’ve always given each album a shot and have found a few of the songs to be good that I’ll add them to my Ipod. No recent album has been as good or better than Hybrid Theory (2000) or Meteora.
Here’s links to lyrics and music for Living Things:
More recent Linkin Park Park albums (Minutues to Midnight, 2006 and A Thousand Suns, 2008) tend to focus more on overcoming (in whatever way) the issues that they were angry about in their first two albums.
My favourite song on Living Things is Lies Greed Misery (Track #4). I like the music for Skin to Bone (Track #9). The lyrics for Roads Untraveled (Track #8) are good.
“Lies Greed Misery”
Sayin’ that I softened
I was duckin’ down to reload
So you can save your petty explanations
I don’t have the patience
Before you even say it I know
You let your pride and your ego
Talk slick to me, no
That is not the way I get down
And look at how you lose your composure
Now let me show you
Exactly how the breaking point sounds
I wanna see you choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
Choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
What is it you want me to tell you
I am not the failure
I would rather live and let be
But you came with the right kind of threat to
Push me to let you
No you can’t intimidate me
You disrespect me so clearly
Now you better hear me
That is not the way it goes down
You did it to yourself and it’s over
Now let me show you
Exactly how the breaking point sounds
I wanna see you choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
Choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
I wanna see you choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
Choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
You did it to yourself [x8]
I wanna see you choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
Choke on your lies
Swallow up your greed
Suffer all alone in your misery
Am I Myself Again?
venushalley1984 got me thinking. She commented on my post “Excuses and Reasons” and she shared with me a phrase she hears often and hates, “depression is lying to you.” This is to say that your depression (or another symptom of your illness) is creating something (thoughts, behaviours, emotions) that is not real. Without this illness you would cease to be who you currently are (a lie) and be your real self (the truth). This again brings doubt as to the authenticity of you as a person.
This reminded me of a question I found in Manufacturing Depression by Gary Greenberg. At the end of the book there were discussion questions (which I will add to this blog eventually). The first question is the one I want to address:
How does the concept of “On this medication, I am myself at last” (35) make you feel?
To say that your depression is lying and that medication will make you feel like yourself draws a clear line of what is the right person and the wrong person to be.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have an amazing “before ” I went into my depression. I do know that I was very shy, didn’t stand up for myself and was extremely sensitive as a child. To me it almost seems inevitable that when faced with bullying that I would become severely depressed. This in essence IS who I was.
I do not mean this in a “you are your illness” kind of way. I just mean I didn’t go from “normal” to “abnormal”, “perfect” to “imperfect”. I very smoothly went into depression. This is what made medication, therapy and “recovery” so scary. I didn’t have this former awesome “normal” self that other people seem to talk about. I had to create a completely new person! When all you know about yourself is darkness how are you supposed to create someone who can be in the light?
I don’t think depression is lying. I think depression exacerbates feelings, behaviours and thoughts but I don’t think if depression was gone those things would disappear, they may just not be the end of the world. The “myself” that Gary Greenberg is referencing isn’t who you are but who society wants you to be and you should be able to choose if you want to be that person. There is nothing wrong with that person but there is also nothing wrong with being the “ill” person.
We need to ditch the idea of right or wrong in regards to human emotions. The regulation is exhausting! Who are we to say what is the appropriate amount to feel? Who are we to say that someones interpretation of a situation is wrong? For all we know it is the “ill” people who are actually feeling the “right” way and the “normal” people who are feeling the “wrong” way!
I am who I am. That should not be discredited just because I have been labelled with an illness. I do not want medication to “restore” me to a person that I never actually was and is someone who I’m being told I should be. Maybe allowing us to feel and be would make being less harder?
